


a lucid dream

by branwyn



Category: Lost
Genre: Ben's just working on some stuff, Dream Logic, M/M, in his sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:28:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/branwyn/pseuds/branwyn
Summary: Ben is hot and trembling and filled with rage so profound it might almost be grief.Also, there’s a knife in his hand.
Relationships: Benjamin Linus/John Locke
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	a lucid dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talkingtothesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/gifts).



1.

Ben gets the cleaning supplies from housekeeping. The door to the service hallway is marked employees only, but it isn’t locked. He carries a bucket full of rags and chemicals back to the room, and doesn’t see a single person on his way. 

The smell of bleach, so familiar from his childhood, burns his nose. He’s thorough, but he doesn’t linger. The room tells an obvious story that no one is likely to question. 

“Goodbye, John,” he says. “I’ll miss you.” 

He means it, even.

2.

There are a dozen rooms on either side of the corridor and not a single light burning in any of them.

At the bottom of the hotel stairwell Ben takes a deep breath of musty air, fixes a bored expression on his face, and leans against the lobby door until it opens. 

Only it isn’t the lobby. This...is the same corridor he just left. 

3.

Behind the door to the right of the stairwell, a woman is having a nervous breakdown. 

Her daughter—her real child—is dead. So she’ll be sending the strange, solemn little boy in her house back to the group home soon. He’s no longer needed.

Ben shuts that door. Nothing to see there, really.

Two doors down, a teenage John Locke argues with his high school biology teacher. John isn’t interested in going to college. John wants to hunt and fish and fix cars.

 _Boring_ , Ben thinks.

He tries the stairs again. Through the windows in the stairwell he sees the moon shining over a small, dirty piece of Los Angeles.

This time, the lobby door opens on the polished whiteness of a hospital room. John Locke, _sans_ kidney, lies connected to a bank of monitors.

“Hell,” Ben mutters.

It isn’t that he feels no sympathy, he thinks, as John hurls an empty bedpan at the wall. Fathers are just _like_ that. If only John had learned his lesson.

If only someone had warned Alex.

The hospital stairwell smells like stale cigarettes and second thoughts. Ben tries for the lobby again.

This time, the door opens onto a dark second floor hallway in somebody’s home.

Ben goes down the stairs, following the sounds of a football game on TV.

In an empty living room, in the blue light, John Locke lies curled up on the floor, sobbing silently into his arms.

“Oh, John.” Uncomfortable, Ben keeps his distance. “This doesn’t help. You should really know that by now.”

Around them are empty shelves and unfaded patches of wall. The furniture is oddly arranged, to cover gaps. 

“She was never going to stay with you forever,” Ben explains. “Having a destiny is kind of like living at the Y. Single occupancy. No room for wives, or families.” He’d found that out for himself, the hard way. “You’re both better off, really.”

John gasps a small, broken sound that might be a name.

Ben wonders what will happen if he just walks out the front door.

4.

The ground drops out from under him so suddenly that his body doesn’t lurch. 

All around him is blue sky. He might be floating, might be falling.

He lands.

 _Did it hurt_ , he’d asked John once. 

Ben lies in the depression his body made in the earth. He hears a groan and assumes it comes from his own lips. He can’t move until he thinks about it for a minute. 

Inch by inch, he gets to his feet. Nearby, John lies broken and still on the grass. 

Looking at him is surreal, because Ben knows what lies under the surface. Knows that John’s body is a bag stuffed with blood and broken pottery shards. The moment they touch him, he’ll come apart.

Behind them is a luxury high rise. 

Ben crosses a square of bright green grass, faintly surprised to find his legs working. He pushes a door open. He steps into an elevator, then out of it. Anthony Cooper lives on the 8th floor.

He is hot and trembling and filled with rage so profound it might almost be grief.

Also, there’s a knife in his hand.

The door to Anthony Cooper’s apartment opens right away. Ben looks into Cooper’s smug, smiling face, and slashes his throat. 

_I’ve done this before_ , Ben thinks, as he kneels over the fallen body and begins sawing at the neck. There’s no blood, only the red of butchered meat. 

On his back, Anthony Cooper smiles his wet red smile.

Maybe this isn’t how it works. Maybe he only gets to kill the father once. 

He leaves the body gurgling on the floor and looks for the exit.

5.

He’s standing in front of the door to John Locke’s hotel room. _I’m sure I shut it behind me,_ he’s thinking.

The door is ajar.

Ben has never had to sanitize his own murder scene before, so it’s understandable that he’s a little anxious about the state he left it in. 

There’s a noise inside the room. Someone’s in there. Something alive. 

His sweaty hand moves on its own, pushing the door open. The hinges groan half-heartedly. 

Silhouetted by the yellow street light shining through the window, John Locke sits at the desk, writing a letter. 

“Oh.” Ben takes a long, long breath. Keeps breathing in until his sides swell up, then lets it all go at once. 

John is alive. Ben didn’t murder him. It’s _such_ a relief.

“I’m so glad to see you,” says Ben, as John pushes the chair back from the desk. “I tried to kill your father for you,” he says, as John opens a plastic bag with a hardware store logo. “I’d like to talk if you don’t mind,” he says, as John climbs onto the desk and loops the rope around his neck.

Ben wants to leave. Ben can’t move. He’d acted on instinct to stop John from hurting himself last time. It was only afterwards that he realized how it had to end. 

_At least he’ll die knowing someone else thought he was important enough to kill_ , Ben had consoled himself.

He starts moving towards the desk without thought or conscious intention. His body is a vehicle; Ben is a passenger.

When he untethers the rope John means to hang himself with, John just watches from above.

When Ben extends a hand, offering to help him down off the desk, they don’t speak to each other.

When John stumbles away, wiping tears from his eyes, Ben watches himself approach softly from behind and flip a length of cord around John’s neck. 

This isn’t Ben’s doing. This is just happening, as it has to. The only real things in this room are John, Ben, and the rope. John doesn’t even fight back. His body thrashes and kicks, and a long, aspirant noise between a groan and a hiss issues from his mouth, but he’s accepting of his murder, otherwise.

He goes gently, relatively speaking. Ben is the one panting wetly.

6.

The instant John goes limp in his arms, Ben collapses. Finally, he’s free to bury his face in the crook of John’s warm neck and smell the salt of his skin. 

This is the first time he’s ever shed tears for John Locke. Only now that he’s doing it does he realize why he never did before. Ben never shed any tears for himself either. He never saw the point.

On the floor of the hotel room, kneeling on thin, gritty carpet, half crushed under the body of a much larger man, Ben rocks back and forth, clinging. 

Eventually, a watery sunrise lightens the window.

A cold hand slips into Ben’s, and squeezes.

*


End file.
